"We might need the chest."
"Oh, no, we won't. They will be so much easier to carry that way. Silas could drive down there. And, oh, you can't imagine how much good they will do."
Cynthia went down to see afterward, and the poor woman's gratitude brought tears to her eyes.
"They will be a perfect God-send this winter," she said. "I've been frettin' as to what we should do. I've never begged yet. Well, the Lord is good."
Then there came another source of interest. Polly Upham was "keeping company." A nice, steady young man in the ship-chandlery business, with a little money saved up, whose folks lived at Portsmouth. He came regularly on Wednesday night and Sundays to tea. They went to church in the evening, and that certified it to the young people. Betty had left school and was trying her hand at housekeeping. Louis, the little fellow, was a big boy.
Alice Turner was engaged also, and certainly very much in love if she considered the young man a paragon. Cynthia compared them all with Cousin Chilian, and it wasn't a bit fair.
She met Mr. Saltonstall at a small party, where they played games and had forfeits.
It was odd, she thought, how the girls chose him in everything. She didn't choose him once. He spoke of it afterward.
"Why, I thought some of the others ought to have a chance," she explained with winning sweetness. "But if it had been dancing!" and she laughed, and that reconciled him.
Then Mrs. Lynde Saltonstall gave her house-warming. It was a simple dwelling and not very large, but it was pretty as a picture. And young people didn't expect to rival their fathers and mothers in the start.